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I’ve been doing a lot of work lately with various Census products. Mostly recently, I’ve been trying to pull together some data to visualize trends in the number of bike commuters in Oakland. This data is readily available in Summary File 3 (SF-3) for the 2000 Census, and you can also find it in the American Community Survey (ACS) files.

My understanding was that the ACS files were kind of a stop-gap measure: they provided more current information than the decennial census, but were lass accurate. I thought for accuracy’s sake, I should use the SF-3 file information from both 2000 and 2010, in addition to the ACS data. Since I couldn’t find the SF-3 data for 2010 on American FactFinder, I figured it must just not be released yet, so I waited.

Today I discovered it doesn’t matter how long I wait — there won’t be an SF-3:

So, although many data users were expecting the full suite of Census indicators they had in the 2000 Summary File 3, the Census has changed its delivery method and methodology, and it is now distributing many of those through the ACS. The good news is that the ACS is updated annually, instead of decennially, and so estimates for household income, poverty and the like will be refreshed every year.

Thanks to the bloggers at PolicyMap for clearing up this mystery for me! I’d never heard of PolicyMap before, but as of today I have an account. Check out the lovely maps you can build in a matter of minutes:

Earlier this week Oakland City Council unanimously approved plans for a Bus Rapid Transit line along International Boulevard. The buses will have a dedicated center lane, so service can be faster and more dependable. Plus more crosswalks, bulb-outs and bike lanes — what’s not to love?

Assessing the economic viability of a potential BRT line on International was part of the larger Complete Streets internship project that got me involved with transportation planning about a year ago now, so this news is particularly exciting.

A friend of mine sent me this article a while back, but I am just getting around to reading it now. I really enjoy the way the author makes America sound like some kind of high fantasy land created by the likes of George R. R. Martin with different cultural bulwarks and aristocratic mechanitions. Like with those fantasy books though, my somewhat shaky geographic sense leaves me flipping to the map in the map in the front a little too often.

I dislike, however, the author’s insistence on citing election results (particularly presidential ones) as evidence of an ideological schism. Ever since reading Fiorina’s Culture War, I have this little voice in the back of my head asking if it is really more valid to see that red/blue map as polarization of the populace rather than apathy or polarization of the elite.

Either way, I’d like to read the author’s book, even if I would enjoy it more as a work of fiction.